R is for Analytics: How Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM users can take advantage

Since July, when Power BI began to support R visuals in its reports and dashboards, it's become harder and harder to justify remaining ignorant of R. The so-called "lingua franca of data science" has thousands of scripts already written and ready to be pressed into service for Power BI and Dynamics users.

For business users, there are countless use cases where R scripts can be used to solve real-world using Dynamics CRM and ERP solutions, including with Power BI, says data analyst and Microsoft MVP Tomaž Kaštrun. For example, Kaštrun recently used R to comb through millions of historical invoices taken from Dynamics NAV and identify the handful that were most likely to be fraudulent (more on that below).

Data slicing in Power BI

To understand the usefulness of R, take what might seem a simple case: data slicing. As Kaštrun blogged last month, Power BI users exploring data sets sometimes find they want to explore a subset of their data. In the case of Dynamics user, they might interested in quarterly sales results from 2014  and 2015 only, and then only in regions 2 and 3 of their sales district.

Zooming in to subsections of one's data is called data slicing. And as previously noted, R can ...